Divya Gokulnath went from a student in Byju Raveendran’s class to co-founder of India’s biggest edtech

The most repeated fact about Divya Gokulnath is also the most instructive one: before she co-founded BYJU’S, she was a student in Byju Raveendran’s test-prep classroom. She had cleared the path to a master’s abroad, the default move for a high-scoring Indian engineering graduate, and chose instead to stay and teach. That single decision is the hinge the whole company turns on, and it is why she is a genuine co-founder of the operating story, not a name attached to it. What followed was, for a few years, the most valuable startup India had ever produced, and then one of its most public unravellings. Both halves are her story.

Early life and education

Divya Gokulnath grew up in Bengaluru in a family with a medical and academic background, on the conventional high-achiever track: do well, take an engineering degree, leave for a graduate seat overseas. She studied biotechnology engineering in the city and, by her own account, prepared for graduate admissions abroad, the expected next step. The deviation from that script is the entire point of the biography: she walked into Byju Raveendran’s coaching class as a student, and walked out committed to teaching rather than to the flight out. In a culture where the overseas master’s is treated as the safe maximisation of a strong record, choosing the classroom was the unconventional, higher-variance bet.

From student to teacher to co-founder

Her “career before” is unusually short and unusually load-bearing: she became one of the earliest teachers in the classroom-coaching operation that preceded the app. That matters because it shaped what BYJU’S actually sold. Standing in front of a hall of students teaching to test outcomes is a brutally direct feedback loop, you see, in real time, the exact moment a fourteen-year-old loses the thread of a concept. That instinct for where comprehension breaks is what she carried into content and product as the company moved from auditoriums to a film-grade learning app, and it is why she, not a hired CMO, became the brand’s most trusted on-camera face during the years parents were deciding whether to believe in paid digital learning at all.

Why BYJU’S existed at all

BYJU’S began as Byju Raveendran’s mass test-prep classes and was incorporated as Think & Learn. The insight Divya and Byju acted on was contrarian for its moment: India’s schooling problem was not primarily access to lectures, free lectures were already everywhere, it was engagement. A child will not watch what bores them, and a bored child does not learn, no matter how cheap or available the content. The 2015 learning app productised that thesis: treat lessons like watchable media, not recorded tuition, and aim it at school students rather than only exam aspirants. That reframing, from access to attention, is what turned a coaching business into a category.

The early struggle: selling belief

The first product was not the hard part; conviction was. Before “edtech” was an accepted category, BYJU’S was asking Indian parents to pay a premium subscription for software, against an internet full of free alternatives, on the promise that their child would actually use it. Manufacturing that belief at national scale required two expensive machines built in parallel: a studio-grade content operation, and an enormous direct-sales force that sat in living rooms closing subscriptions. Divya was the trust layer over both, the recognisable, credible educator who made a sales-heavy company feel like a teaching one. That was a real asset on the way up; it also tied her name permanently to what the sales engine later became.

Funding and the acquisition machine

BYJU’S raised one of the largest private funding stacks in Indian startup history from a long roster of global investors widely reported to include Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Naspers/Prosus, Sequoia (Peak XV), Silver Lake, Qatar Investment Authority and BlackRock, among others. It deployed that capital into an aggressive acquisition spree, Aakash (a large, mostly cash deal), WhiteHat Jr, Toppr, Great Learning, Epic and others, buying its way into adjacent segments rather than building them. At the peak it was widely reported as India’s most valuable startup at a valuation of roughly US$22 billion. That figure is now strictly historical, and stating it without the second half would be dishonest.

The reckoning

What followed is among the most heavily documented corporate unravellings in Indian startup history: long-delayed financial statements, the resignation of its auditor (Deloitte) and of high-profile board members, a bitter dispute with lenders over a large foreign-currency term loan, governance and valuation write-downs by investors, some marking the stake to a fraction of cost, and insolvency-related proceedings before the NCLT. The specifics remain contested in litigation and are not all settled fact; what is not in dispute is that the same capital-and-acquisition intensity that built the peak is widely cited as central to the collapse. Divya Gokulnath remained one of the company’s public voices through the descent, which is itself part of what the story teaches.

Growth strategy, and why it cut both ways

Three choices drove the rise: producing content like a film studio rather than a tuition centre; a capital-heavy, high-pressure direct-sales engine; and acquisition-led expansion instead of organic build. Each was an accelerant in a zero-interest-rate, growth-at-all-costs market. The uncomfortable lesson is that none of the three was secretly different on the way down, the same studio cost base, the same sales intensity (which drew mis-selling allegations), and the same acquisition debt became the weight that sank the company once cheap capital disappeared. It is not that the strategy worked and then a separate thing went wrong; the strategy was both the engine and the fault line.

BYJU’S startup timeline

• 2011, Think & Learn Pvt Ltd incorporated; mass test-prep classes scale.
• 2015, The BYJU’S learning app launches for school students.
• 2017–2021, Large funding rounds and an acquisition spree (including WhiteHat Jr, Aakash, Toppr, Epic, Great Learning); valuation widely reported climbing toward roughly US$22 billion.
• 2022 onward, Auditor and board exits, investor disputes, steep valuation markdowns and insolvency-related proceedings, all widely reported.

BYJU’S business model

Heavily produced video learning content sold as a premium subscription, distributed through a large, capital-intensive direct-sales force, and scaled by acquiring adjacent edtech companies rather than building every segment in-house.

BYJU’S competitors

Across its segments BYJU’S competed with Unacademy and Vedantu (live classes and test prep), Physics Wallah (low-cost exam prep), Toppr (before BYJU’S acquired it) and the broader Indian edtech market in early learning.

More founder journeys: women founders in edtech · edtech founder database · first-generation women founders · women founders in Bengaluru.

What Divya Gokulnath’s story teaches Indian founders

The instructive arc is not “student becomes billionaire.” It is that the same operating bias, spend hard, acquire fast, defend the narrative, that builds the most valuable startup in a country can also be what breaks it when growth capital stops being free. For founders, BYJU’S is a single case study with two endings, and the second ending is the more useful one to read closely.

Frequently asked questions about Divya Gokulnath and BYJU’S

Who is Divya Gokulnath?

Divya Gokulnath is an Indian education entrepreneur and a co-founder and director of BYJU’S (Think & Learn Pvt Ltd). She began as a student in Byju Raveendran’s test-prep classes, became one of its earliest teachers, and co-built the company into what was, for a period, India’s most valuable startup. She is married to Byju Raveendran.

What is Divya Gokulnath’s net worth?

This is a privately held company, so there is no disclosed valuation or public net-worth figure; the founder’s stake is a private holding rather than a listed, market-priced one.

What does BYJU’S do?

BYJU’S is an education-technology company that started as mass test-preparation coaching and grew into a learning app for school and competitive-exam students, expanding through a large series of acquisitions. Its model combined heavily produced video learning content with an aggressive direct-sales subscription engine.

What can founders learn from BYJU’S?

That a capital-heavy, acquisition-led growth strategy can manufacture extraordinary valuation and extraordinary fragility at the same time. The BYJU’S story is most useful read as one case with two endings, the rise and the reckoning, rather than as a success template.